Triangle Church in Ipswich to help families eat on a budget during the cost of living crisis

A church is helping families eat on a budget during the cost-of-living crisis.

Triangle Church, in Dickens Road, Ipswich, is offering a four-week course to teach people how to cook cheap and nutritious meals.

Attendees are given a slow cooker and taught how to cut costs in a scheme known as 'Wellbeing Wednesdays'.

As with many other Anglican churches in the town, Triangle Church is also part of the 'Ipswich Top Up shops' scheme which offers discounted food.

Every Wednesday from 9.30am until 10.30am, people can pay £2 to fill up a bag with food to take home.

The Church’s Vicar Lawrence Carey said: "After becoming aware of people struggling with how to cook the food they were buying from the Top Up Shop, we sought to address this by obtaining funding, which enables us to create the scheme.

"By giving people a slow cooker and then working in groups of six people over four weeks we have learnt how to best use a slow cooker, creating nutritional meals on a budget.

"And because slow cooking is very energy efficient people have been able to save on energy costs as well."

The Bishop of Dunwich, the Rt Rev Dr Mike Harrison, visited the Wellbeing Wednesday project.

He said that churches are gearing up to offer warm spaces during the cold

Other churches are offering pop-up shops to help alleviate rising prices, including debt advice, school uniform swap shops, and signposting to other services that could help people.

Bishop Mike added: "These initiatives are vital as they offer practical, concrete steps to address some of the problems being faced by those most sharply affected by the recent downturn economically.

"I would encourage other churches to learn from these examples and consider what practically they might do to provide support for already existing initiatives which churches are running, and which are clearly meeting a need."